[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

I envision a turntable and digital music server as the only sources in hi-fi set ups in more than a few years. CD players will fall out of favor in the home like 8-tracks and cassettes.

Much as I dislike hassling with records, and all the residual noise they have, you may be right. Still, I expect there will always be a considerable die-hard remnant of CD audiophiles, just like you have with vinyl. At least until they all die out – literally...

As it is, all too often the quality of recordings are atrocious, and I doubt suffering them in MP3 will help things.

Boy, ain’t that the truth!

This says it best, I think......

Excellent article. Depressing, but excellent.

A quote from a comment at the end of that article:

My oldest daughter, Sarah, is a great case in point. Sarah would marry her iPod if it could cook. If it weren't for me she'd never hear anything that wasn't squashed & compressed and run through one sort of lossy codec wringer or another.

She can hear the qualitative differences, but in her mind convenience (and the fact she can store every tune in her collection in something small enough to fit in her purse) far outweighs intrinisc quality. Dr Earl Geddes pointed out in an AES Convention Paper, "Auditory Perception of Nonlinear Distortion" mp3s can have a measured THD upwards of 50% ! For someone like Sarah - who puts convenience & portability above all else - that is simply a non-issue.

So goes an entire generation. Unfortunately, since it’s the youngsters who comprise the bulk of the music-buying public, they are the ones who will be catered to. For those of us who care, I suppose our only hope is if they can figure out a way to compress the files without an audible penalty. If they can’t do that – we’re screwed.

Regards,
Wayne